


Her

by slashy (slashmyheartandhopetoporn)



Series: New World [1]
Category: Daredevil (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-21
Updated: 2016-03-21
Packaged: 2018-05-28 02:09:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,997
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6310951
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/slashmyheartandhopetoporn/pseuds/slashy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“You want a drinking buddy?”</p><p>The bottle drops from Karen’s hands and hits the area rug with a dull thunk. </p><p>“Didn’t break at least,” Frank says after a moment. “That was lucky.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Her

On the anniversary of their death, Karen spends the whole day at work thumbing through all her files on Frank, his family, and his trial. Like some kind of twisted tribute. _I won’t forget what happened to you. To_ any _of you._ She gets nothing done, forgets to eat, and ignores the calls she receives from both Matt and Foggy. She doesn't really want to talk to either of them.

She leaves work early, at Mitchell's behest, and almost walks right into traffic as she’s crossing to the subway station. On the train, she presses her eyes shut and puts the back of her hand to her lips, feels the breath from her nose tickle the little hairs on her fingers.

_I am alive. I am safe. I am strong._

When she enters her apartment, she studiously ignores the plastered-in bullet holes. Her landlord keeps saying he'll paint, but it hasn't happened yet. She’s starting to think it never will. Payback for putting the holes there in the first place, she supposes. She tosses her purse on the bed and grabs the bottle of vodka off the nightstand. She’s not going to bother pretending it’s not going to be another one of those nights.

“You want a drinking buddy?”

The bottle drops from Karen’s hands and hits the area rug with a dull _thunk_.

“Didn’t break at least,” Frank says after a moment. “That was lucky.”

“Jesus fucking Christ, Frank,” Karen whispers. Then again, louder. “Jesus fucking Christ!”

Frank takes a step forward, coming fully out of the shadow cast by the bathroom door, and shoves his hands in his pockets. “Come out with me?”

Karen wraps her arms around herself. “Are you out of your mind? I haven’t seen or heard from you in months.” Frank looks ready to say something, but Karen doesn’t give him the chance.  “And then you show up _in my apartment_ to, what? Ask me _out_?”

Frank shrugs. “Kind of.”

Karen snatches her bag off the bed and roughly slings it over her shoulder. “Fine,” she snaps. “But you’re paying.”

 

\--

 

She takes him to the same Indian restaurant she took Matt to--because it’s close, and it’s good--and is relieved to find the place unsullied by their stunted relationship. It’s only once she and Frank are seated and looking at the plastic menus that it occurs to Karen to ask if Frank even likes Indian food.

He keeps his eyes on Karen, not bothering to look anywhere else. “I’m not picky.”

Karen fidgets with the menu and ducks her gaze. “Good,” she says.

Beyond ordering their food, they don’t talk again, and the silence is so tense Karen feels like she’s suffocating with it. She stares at Frank and thinks to herself over and over again, _I am alive. I am safe. I am strong._ Frank’s gaze on her is steady, and Karen wonders what he sees when he takes her in. She figures he probably doesn’t see anything good.

When their food arrives, Frank takes a bite and breaks the silence with a grunt. “It’s good,” he says gruffly. “Kind of reminds me of the some of the stuff we ate back in Afghanistan.”

The question is on the tip of Karen’s tongue. _What happened in Kandahar?_ But Frank looks at her like he knows it, a challenge to ask the obvious. Karen refrains and opts instead to push her curry around her plate.

Frank continues speaking. “It was hard at first, you know? Adjusting to the food. Spicy shit. But after a while I came around.” He watches Karen play with her meal. “You like Middle Eastern food?”

“Afghanistan's not part of the Middle East,” Karen says, mostly to be difficult.

Frank snorts. “Good to know you haven’t changed.”

Karen puts her fork down. “Haven’t I?”

“Eat your food,” Frank replies. “I'm not paying for you to waste it.”

Karen eats.

After a while, Frank speaks again. “There’s a good falafel joint not far from where I live. You at least like falafel?”

“I’m not picky,” Karen says, and Frank grins at the way she throws his own words back him.

“Yeah, maybe I’ll take you sometime.”

“That mean you’re planning to break into my apartment again?”

“You could give me your number.”

Part of Karen knows that she shouldn’t be encouraging Frank. That her options with him should exceed beyond “Give him my number or let him keep breaking into my home.” But they're in each other's orbit now, and Karen feels a pull towards Frank that she’s starting to think he suffers from as well. _Of course_ they were going to see each other again. _Of course_ the only question was how they were going to keep in contact.

Frank writes her number down on a napkin, and then carefully folds it up and slips it into his inside jacket pocket. “Thanks,” he murmurs.

“You're welcome.”

When Frank’s paid the bill, the dinner ostensibly done, Karen finds she can’t bring herself to ask _What next?_ She’s afraid Frank will simply offer to walk her home. He surprises her, though. As always.

“You want coffee?”

Karen swallows. “I always want coffee.”

They walk to a diner a few blocks up the street, a respectable distance between them. Karen’s itching to step closer, see if she can get their shoulders to brush, but she fights the urge. What would it accomplish? She doesn’t know the exact nature of her feelings towards Frank, but she knows it’ll be bad news if it turns out the inclination is romantic. So she steps an extra half foot to the side. If Frank notices he doesn’t let on, and he still opens the door for her when they reach the diner.

“Coffee good here?” he asks.

“It’s hot and it’s strong and there’s a lot of it,” Karen answers.

They sit in a back corner booth and once again fall into silence, though it’s no longer uncomfortable. Karen doesn’t bother averting her eyes now, and allows herself to take Frank in. There’s a fresh cut above his right eye, and his knuckles are swollen, but otherwise he seems in one unbeaten piece. She doesn’t let herself feel bad for having missed the ridge of his nose. Frank doesn’t seem to mind her stare, and he serves one right back to Karen. She’s past the point of self-consciousness, though.

“Keeping yourself busy?” she asks eventually.

Frank shrugs. “Not as busy as I’d like.”

“Laying low, I’d guess.”

“It’s a bitch and a half, but it beats prison.”

“I imagine most things do.”

Frank runs his finger around the circle of his coffee cup. “You know, I thought today would be harder.” It takes Karen a minute to adjust to the abruptness of the subject change. “I mean, it’s still a fucking awful day. But every day is fucking awful, so today doesn’t feel that different.”

“Are you upset by that?” Karen asks. “By the fact that you don’t feel so much worse today?”

Frank looks a little like Karen slapped him. “Excuse me?”

“They call you The Punisher because of what you do to other people.” Karen wraps both hands around her coffee cup and uses the warmth there to strengthen her resolve to continue speaking. “I think you accept the title because you’re really trying to punish yourself. It follows that, on the anniversary of their death, you’d want it to hurt more.”

“All due respect, ma'am, but I don’t think you know what you’re talking about--”

"And I think you’re out tonight with me to give yourself something else to punish yourself for because it doesn’t hurt more.”

The comment comes as much of a surprise to Karen as it does to Frank, but she doesn’t take it back.

Frank swallows. “And just how is spending time with you something I should be punished for?”

“Because in your world you should be out taking down the kind of people who’d do to others what the Black Smith did to your family. And instead you’re sitting in a diner and drinking coffee with some other woman while your dead wife and children rot in the ground.”

Frank’s grip is a vice around his mug, and Karen half expects it to shatter under the pressure, breaking into a hundred pieces, slivers of ceramic worming their way into Frank’s roughened fingers and palms. But the mug remains in tact, Frank’s hands unharmed. He looks at her like he’s been wounded, an expression she hasn’t seen since that day in the hospital when he’d found out Karen had been is his house. His home. But that was just her, Karen supposes. Always finding ways to transgress Frank Castle’s boundaries and twist the knife she used to jimmy the lock in a little bit deeper.

“You’re a stone cold bitch,” Frank says. “Haven’t been around one of those in a while.”

 _Since you’re wife_ , Karen doesn’t say, because she feels she’s done enough damage for one evening.

Frank signals for a refill on his coffee.

A few sips in, Frank says, “Listen, Karen. You think you know me, and maybe you do. But I want to get one thing straight: You’re not a punishment. And I’m not going to punish myself for spending time with you.”

It’s Karen’s turn to grip her mug so hard she thinks it might break.

“You got that?” Frank asks, and Karen nods. Frank nods too. “Okay.”

 

\--

 

Frank walks Karen home, and this time she doesn’t bother maintaining any sort of personal bubble; she lets her shoulders skip against his with every step. When they arrive at her stoop, Karen keeps her head down as she says, “Never did get around to that vodka.”

Frank cocks his head. “Never say never.”

They go upstairs.

The bottle is still on the floor where Karen dropped it, so she picks it up and places it heavily on the small dining table she’s fitted into one corner of her apartment.

“Should we bother with glasses?” she asks.

Frank shakes his head. “I ain’t going to judge if you ain’t.”

Once they’re seated at the table, the bottle is passed between them. Karen watches Frank press the bottle to his lips, watches his adam’s apple bob with every swallow. She hasn’t turned any lights on, and Frank’s face looks stark in the shadows cast by the streetlamp outside. Their fingers brush as he passes her the drink, and Karen doesn’t try to hide the small shiver. She puts the bottle to her mouth and gulps. If Frank’s mouth left any taste behind, the alcohol’s washed it away. All Karen tastes is vodka, as if Frank’s lips were never even there.

She couldn’t tell you how they ended up on the bed, though Karen vaguely remembers complaining about the dining chairs being too uncomfortable. All she knows for sure is that it’s been two hours and all the vodka’s gone, and somehow she’s slumped up against Frank with her pillows shoved up behind them.

“Hey, Frank,” Karen says sluggishly. “Thanks for stopping by.”

Frank pats her knee gently, then rests his hand along her thigh. “Thanks for coming out with me.”

 

\--

 

When Karen wakes in the morning, there is no sign that Frank was ever there. The empty vodka bottle rests on the nightstand, and for a moment in her hungover-daze, Karen thinks she drank it all herself and dreamed up everything that seems to have come before. 

After throwing up in the bathroom, however, she remembers none of it was a dream at all, not even the feeling of Frank’s hand in her own as Karen slowly drifted off into sleep. She stares down at her hand, her head swimming, and internally repeats _I am alive. I am safe. I am strong._

Something about Frank Castle makes her feel all three even more acutely, and though her head is throbbing and her mouth dry and foul-tasting, Karen stands alone in her empty apartment, and smiles.

**Author's Note:**

> this ship is such an otp already i can't really deal with it.
> 
> p.s. i'm on tumblr too! (slashmyheartandhopetoporn.tumblr.com)


End file.
